When glancing through the list of European’s best ranked playing golf professionals, one always has the impression it mainly contains golfers from the UK, Sweden, Spain and a few lost Frenchmen and Danes. Intuitively the explanation is likely to be found in the number of golf courses and the number of active players in these countries. The UK has by far the largest number of both and hence it should not surprise they are at the top of the list in both categories. However, it would be nice to see which country would rank first in terms of number of playing professionals vis a vis the country’s golfing population and number of courses. Would the UK still rank first? The following table (sources: EGA, KPMG, World PGA Rankings) summarizes this relationship and the surprising conclusion is that Italy ranks first!

Country

Players

Courses

Partici-
pation

Golfers per
course

Inhabitants
per course

Population
(mln)

Ranked
pros

Pros as %
of players

Pros per
course

Italy

100317

269

0,173%

373

216083

58,0

15

0,0150%

0,056

UK&Ireland

1369448

2993

2,206%

458

20744

62,1

147

0,0107%

0,049

Denmark

152622

201

2,775%

759

27366

5,5

12

0,0079%

0,060

France

410377

574

0,637%

715

112230

64,4

32

0,0078%

0,056

Spain

388160

345

0,834%

1.125

117464

46,5

27

0,0070%

0,078

Austria

104475

151

1,272%

692

54373

8,2

6

0,0057%

0,040

Netherlands

193350

192

1,158%

1.007

87062

16,7

11

0,0057%

0,057

Switzerland

76693

94

1,009%

816

80899

7,6

4

0,0052%

0,043

Finland

137282

126

2,615%

1.090

41669

5,2

7

0,0051%

0,056

Sweden

512407

456

5,656%

1.124

19868

9,1

25

0,0049%

0,055

Norway

125160

174

2,686%

719

26785

4,7

5

0,0040%

0,029

Belgium

53190

79

0,511%

673

131827

10,4

1

0,0019%

0,013

Germany

599328

700

0,728%

856

117614

82,3

11

0,0018%

0,01

.
The following conclusions can be drawn:

Italy; low participation rate, empty courses but relatively a lot of playing professionals. Italy is counting several very talented professionals such as the Molinari brothers and young gun Manassero. This is particularly surprising given that there are not that many courses and that the participation rate (% golfers vs total population) is extremely low vs the remainder of Europe. Moreover intuitively you would expect the temperament of the Italians vs for example the Swedes would work against them. Hence there must be other reasons why the Italians are doing so well such as possibly a very efficient teaching/talent system and the fact that they have plenty of room to practice.

UK and Ireland; high participation rate and low player density per course but still relatively many ranked playing professionals. It is not surprising that the UK is delivering the most ranked playing professionals in absolute terms. In fact it should given the enormous number of available golf courses and high number of players. However the UK is also doing well in relative terms. As can be seen in the table only Italy delivers more playing professionals as a % of the total golf-players pool. Hence the UK also manages to breed very good players. In fact this should be no surprise given that the country has a big golf heritage and hence has an enormous experience as far as education is concerned.
Sweden and Germany have low number of ranked playing professionals vs number of total players. Both Sweden and Germany have over half a million golf players. Nevertheless, both countries do not manage to deliver many playing pros. Whereas Sweden has the highest participation rate (5,7%) in Europe, Germany scores very low (0,7%) in relative numbers. Clearly there is a big talent pool of good Swedish players on the tour. However given the total number of players, this is still a relative low number. As the Swedes have a very good teaching/talent system, one of the explanations could be that they cannot play the year around as a result of the weather. As far as Germany is concerned, this country should be considered as a sleeping giant. Not only is there plenty of room to attract more people to the golf sport, the country should also be able to convert a higher proportion of players into playing professionals. Reasons why this has not been the case yet could be the lack of tradition, the average age of the German golfer and the teaching/talent system.